Vietnam’s electricity
output during the first eight months of this year has increased by 11.2 percent
to 117.1 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), including 1.2 billion kWh imported from
China, said the country’s utility group EVN said Saturday.

Hydropower plants which
in the first eight months of 2016 generated 32.7 percent of Vietnam's
electricity, often face shutdowns during the dry season, causing nationwide
outages. Meanwhile, coal has taken over hydro power as the leading source of
electricity in the country as it has generated 38.03 percent of the total
output so so far this year.

In response to fast
growing demand for power, Vietnam is building more coal-fired thermal plants
and buying electricity from neighboring China.

However, EVN said last
month it stopped buying power from China for the second month in a row.

The state-run group
which started buying electricity from Chinese power plants in the border
province of Yunnan in 2004, expects it will not have to import more power from
the neighboring country in four consecutive months.

EVN plans to import
about 950 million kWh from China to meet the domestic power needs in 2016, down
44 percent from 2015.

EVN said Vietnam's power
output is expected to reach 183 billion kWh this year.

The average energy consumption
in Vietnam grew 13 percent from 2006-2010, and by about 11 percent from
2011-2015, said Le Tuan Phong, deputy head of the General Directorate of
Energy, adding that the country is on the path towards powering itself by 2030.

The country’s power
production is expected to grow at an annual rate of 14 percent between 2015 and
2030.

Vietnam is also
restructuring its power sector by breaking up its retail power monopoly EVN to
develop a competitive retail power market by 2030.

And it is aiming to
generate enough energy to power almost every home by 2020 and increase
residential solar power usage to 50
percent of households nationwide by 2050.